All The President’s Piss

Where were you when “piss” started trending on most social media?

I was scrolling through Twitter for probably the 20th time that day when almost everyone I was following started making jokes about piss and its intimate connection to the presidency. A quick Google search for “Donald Trump piss”, an abnormal search for me I swear, revealed allegations that he had paid prostitutes to urinate all over a bed in a Russian hotel where the Obamas had once slept.

I believed it instantly. Everyone was making jokes about it and almost all of them were good. The claims were dubiously sourced and are probably not true, revealing no new information about Trump in and of themselves, but they certainly shed light on how I react to that kind of news.

I found that I am immediately prepared to believe the most lurid and ridiculous rumors about our incoming President. I know that most of these rumors are going to be false but I want them to be true, primally. I know this is just a part of having ‘my side’ be out of power. I know this is just a part of wanting there to be some deliberate and exciting conspiracy behind all of the world’s problems, rather than the basic truth that most of the evil that capitalism produces is wildly tedious and banal. I also know that the bar is pretty low here; at no point did it occur to me that paying people to piss on Obama’s bed would be somehow out of Trump’s character, offensive to even suggest.

Trump took to Twitter in all-caps to defend his good name and jumped into a press conference the next day to set the story straight. I’m sure it’s extremely in the constitutional spirit of Checks and Balances to have a President that we, the people, can cyberbully at any time. It’s what our Founding Fathers would have wanted.

Eventually Trump got it together long enough to stand there and nod while a lawyer read a prepared statement. Whatever last shred of good will he might have had towards the nation he’s about to govern just has to be gone.

The thing we should be doing, amidst all of this, is focusing on things that will actually get people to vote Trump and his supporters out of office the first chance that we get. Pissgate is hilarious and endlessly gratifying and does absolutely nothing but flatter those of us who would never think of supporting Trump at any time ever. The harder work — of fighting for universal health care and a higher minimum wage and direct material improvements in the lives of all Americans — is just not as fun. It’s grinding and frustrating and it has to be done.

Provoking Trump meltdowns is great and should be done as much as possible, but it’s not a substitute for crafting better policy. Nobody can freeze to death in the streets and laugh their way to the ballot box.

I’m weak, and I love provoking weakness in my enemies, but the fact that a positive message is challenging should give us all the more reason to try.